DCC vs. Second Edition

If I had to keep one game for fantasy, would it be Second Edition or Dungeon Crawl Classics? While my love of a combined Second and First Edition is strong, the fun factor of DCC can't be discounted.

DCC has far, far, far better support than Second Edition, and even ongoing and regular crowdfunding projects, and if there is only one reason to put Second Edition away, this would be it. DCC's support is better than 5E's at the moment, with giant adventure modules released regularly and a steady stream of smaller adventures with varied and imaginative settings.

With the 5E market, I see a lot of overwritten, expensive, and too-flashy pretentious junk. Everything feels like it is "please like me" overwritten, Chat GPT fluff text trying to sound intelligent, but delivering walls of text that make my eyes glaze over. Even the D&D corebooks are like this, with massive amounts of text to describe ideas that should just be left to the player's imagination.

DCC tends to keep the writing tight, using tables to deliver information, and being economical with their word count. What DCC does in a single chart and paragraph, 5E takes two pages of text to provide the same idea. 5E is one of the worst bloated games ever written, with reams of paper used to fluff the books for a higher MSRP and deliver little actual content.

When in doubt, add 100 pages of ChatGPT text and raise the book price by another $20, and we will make back most of that in profit. Paper is cheap. Concise and efficient designs aren't.

How did we get to the point where brevity is a money-losing strategy?

With Second Edition? I am either playing BX adventures, which are not bad, or recycling AD&D adventures. The support is "sort of what you can find or convert in." It is not bad, but it is not dedicated support. There are a few adventures written for For Gold & Glory, and they are nice, but they are still nowhere near the support DCC regularly receives.

On the other hand, every adventure written for BX, OSE, Labyrinth Lord, Swords & Wizardry, and any other retro-clone is compatible, and it gets easier if they support descending AC. So, really, you do have pretty good support if you expand your thinking and pull in adventures from BX. These work well for FG&G, and really, this is the OSR; your choice of rules is how you express yourself today, and that is cool.

It comes down to a few things. Can I get the full rules to a new player for free in PDF form? Is the publishing license open and free for anyone to create under? Is the book attractive and invites new players to join in and have fun?

FG&G hits all three points perfectly.

And there are some amazing ones. I like a lot of the mega-dungeons written for these games, and each one is easily a 10-year campaign. There is an open question of "Are mega-dungeons too much?" I love how huge and expansive they are, but there are times I prefer a larger campaign area with a few dozen medium-sized dungeons rather than one huge, multi-level monstrosity.

Second Edition has the nostalgia factor, while DCC gives me a tribute band experience, not bad, but not the real thing. There are some tribute bands of classic acts that are better than the real thing. As age takes its toll on these bands, the tribute bands can play with an energy and technical level that shocks me. I don't know the hard-working tribute bands; they pour a lot of heart into what they do, struggling and endlessly compared to the real thing, but putting in the time and effort just out of pure love.

DCC hits that same level of respect from me. This is a group of hard-working people who love the hobby as it was and are trying their best to bring back those days with fun, imaginative ideas. As a tribute band to old-school play, DCC hits all the right notes and brings me back to those days. With the Second Edition, I am playing a game that has seen better days, still the beloved original, but there is a danger here of my memories clashing with the reality of a game that has seen better days and fallen out of active support.

With DCC, every class is designed for maximum fun at the table. They are great class designs, and they have that "instant fun" designed into them, so if you sat down at a random table in a convention to play DCC, you are guaranteed to have a good time. With the Second Edition, it is the slow grind, and while I appreciate that, in today's world, where lots of things ask for our time, I will gravitate towards an instant-gratification game more than a slow grind.

I still like Second Edition; it is the best version of the game for me, across every edition Wizards or TSR put out. For the classic feeling and play, little matches it, and they loosened up the racial level limits to a point where they don't matter as much (or could be ignored), and the story XP is a solid system that is like a lot of the modern XP systems we have today. Taking away "gold for XP" and boosting moster XP makes a huge difference in motivation and why we play. The second edition is 100% compatible with anything made for the first edition or AD&D, so it is a solid choice.

For instant gratification and fast play, DCC wins.

For campaigns and classic play, the second edition, using For Gold & Glory as my rules, wins.

Second Edition Deserves to Live

It is sad how the Second Edition died. With TSR bankrupt, the game took on a tarnish from the mismanagement of the 1990s, as AD&D itself was blamed for the downfall. The game did not deserve to die and end like this. Wizards' buying TSR and releasing 3E as a complete rewrite reenergized players, but it left a stain on 2E's legacy, as if it were a failure.

And we have not had a stable edition from Wizards since. They replaced the 3rd Edition like they replaced the 4th, and now the 5th Edition is in its endgame phase. D&D 4 Essentials came out to "clarify the rules" and "not replace the original," and we see the same thing with 5.5E.

I wish we lived in an alternate timeline where TSR never went away, and we were back on the original set of rules that started this all. Constantly changing the underlying system of how D&D works is getting tiring, and I just want the game to play how it felt back in the good days. While a lot of the concepts are the same, characters and the damage scales have been constantly tinkered with over the last 25 years of Wizards' ownership, and nothing from 3E to 5E uses the exact scaling anymore.

The First and Second editions are the original game, and essentially the same set of rules, and are compatible. 1E and 2E are classic games, like Monopoly, and they should be seen the same way. There are times when I wish Wizards would stop releasing new editions of the game and support and preserve the ones they already have.

And not rewrite, but preserve and honor.

These days, it feels too much to ask, so I am over here in the OSR enjoying the games as they were.

Second Edition is like the 5.5E of today, if 2014 5E was the First Edition. Both games were "changed due to outside societal pressure" to be more "mainstream product." Both may bankrupt the company. The Second Edition introduced significant numerical changes that improved the game, and we still had some great game designers working on the rules.

While a lot was removed due to outside pressure in 2E, it all found its way back into the game, even demons and devils. With 2024 D&D, half-elves and many other choices were removed from the game, and all humanoids were removed from the monster lists. None of the removed content from 2024 D&D is likely to ever return to the game due to the zeitgeist of social media pressure.

The ideological crusade that forced the removal of content from 2E was an outside force, and the designers found a way to bring it all back. The ideological crusade that created 5.5E came from within the company, and we are never going to get these things back.

I fault 2E for its failings, for being too commercial and mainstream, such as dumping assassins, half-orcs, and demons. Demons return in the Outer Planes Appendix, and the Assassin returned in the Complete Thief book. Half-orcs return in the Complete Book of Humanoids. So, all the cut content was eventually restored; it was just well hidden and took a few years to be published and released.

The main books of AD&D 2E remained a mass-market game to avoid controversy.

They kept the game essentially the same as AD&D 1E, and just cleaned up the rules and organization. The more I study D&D 3.0 and 3.5E, the more I see them as inferior to the two originals. I wish Wizards kept its games in eternal print, not changing them, but just keeping every edition of the game available to buy, even in print form. POD is halfway there, but many titles are still not available, and the 1E books have scanning errors.

Still, this was the version of the game that got us back into D&D. We loved the removal of XP for gold pieces, and the story XP system with the higher encounter XP made us fall in love again. The game wasn't about greed anymore; this was about stories and epic tales of heroism. The game wasn't any less deadly either, although progression seemed faster due to the higher rate of XP for encounters.

The tone of the game shifted from gritty swords & sorcery to heroic high fantasy.

Removing demons and devils improved our game. As a DM, I needed to come up with evil factions, use other monsters, highlight evil dragons and their cults, put the yaun-ti front and center, focus on the drow, and use the monster book in creative ways. We never had them as a part of our Forgotten Realms campaign, and the game was better for it.

That is not to say I did not miss them, as ultimate bad guys, they were missed. They more thematically belonged in Greyhawk and other settings, back when 1E featured them prominently, and they did make appearances by the time the Outer Planes Appendix came around. Still, having the first run of the Realms as a "no demons place" made it feel special, like the gods actually worked for a living and kept them out, and other evils had to step up and take on the roles of corrupters and wicked masterminds.

This is why I love For Gold & Glory. It is a clean-room Second Edition game that works as the engine for any Second Edition book or adventure. People can write for this game, and it works with any First Edition book. It is nice to see a version of the game that does not get much love receive attention and support. This is also setting agnostic, and it feels more thematically medieval and grounded than much of the Forgotten Realms books and 2E source material.

It is a fantastic game, authentically medieval, storytelling, and compatible with anything in 2E and 1E. This feels like home to me. The classes are not overpowered and bloated, and you need to rely on gear, teamwork, and smarts to make it by. While the product identity monsters and spells are stripped out, they are easily added back in, or left out if you want to play in original worlds.

Where other games feel too simplified, like Old School Essentials, and other games feel unnecessarily flashy and wild, such as Dungeon Crawl Classics, FG&G hits the Second Edition notes and feels perfect. This is still 1E, but with many quality-of-life improvements. The non-human level limit caps were significantly raised, too, bringing about a better parity and fairness to the other character races.

FG&G is also an open game, and people can write material and adventures for this version. We can't do that for AD&D 2E. I always support the community-supported game that allows for the most freedom.

I get why First Edition takes most of the attention. This is the original game. People look at the Second Edition and see something that Gary Gygax did not work on; it had censorship issues, and it was the edition of the game that bankrupted TSR. When it comes down to it, there are only very minor differences between them, and both editions are cross-compatible.

I love the tone of Second Edition shifting to heroic high fantasy, and the feeling that this was the "game of the novels." The 1990s novels were very popular escapist entertainment. They perfectly captured the freewheeling adventure of those novels, where heroes went from place to place, swinging swords and casting spells, saving the day, and making daring escapes. While the First Edition could do that, the Second Edition was built to provide that experience, primarily through changes to XP, which shaped the nature of play and the flow of the game.

Second Edition Bliss

BX, BECMI, 0e, and White Box tend to be too simple for me. I see most of YouTube going crazy for this easier-to-play system, and yes, they play fast and don't require much rule support, but a lot feels missing. What will always be true is that the BX system as a "base compatibility layer" is the bedrock of gaming, a standard set of math and numbers that all games can communicate with and use.

The one thing Wizards did to "own the game" was break backwards compatibility, which was a sin, and it destroyed D&D. We have the scaling damage of 3.5E, the insane triple-down hit points of 4E, and the doubled hit points of 5E.

There is nothing wrong with the original math. THAC0 is laughably easy; don't listen to the clowns out there. Roll a d20, add the target's AC to the roll, did you roll THAC0 or higher? You hit.

Of course, you are using descending AC too here, but there is nothing wrong with that either. The better the armor, the less of a to-hit bonus you give your opponents. It is simple. Do you have AC 0? The entire world gets no bonus to hit you.

In fact, you can pre-adjust THAC0 for your melee and missile attack adjustments, and it gets even easier. My 6th-level fighter with a THAC0 of 15 has a +1 melee-hit bonus from STR, and a +2 sword. My base THAC0 is now 15 - 1 - 2 = 12. Have fun adding that proficiency bonus, ability score bonus, and weapon modifier to every attack, 5E players. Even if you make it one number, you are still adding it to every roll in 5E and comparing it to a floating target number.

5E is more math versus a floating target number (AC or DC).

With THAC0, my target number never changes: I only add a number from 10 down to 0 (or lower in rare cases) to my attack, then check my THAC0. I attack an AC 3 creature with my THAC0 of 12. Roll a d20 + 3, beat THAC0.

Also, with the second edition, you lose the demons and devils in the game. OSE does not have them either, and that has not stopped that game. They are the same as in the first edition, so port them in from that, and adjust the XP awards to the second edition standards. Or, use the renamed ones out of the AD&D 2E Monster Compendium and Outer Planes Appendix. They are all there; you just have to do a little finding.

Personally, our Forgotten Realms game ran fine without them for a decade, and I liked having to be creative with other monsters and not fall back on the same old tired enemies. Let the mastermind be a red dragon this time, or an intelligent purple worm. Use an NPC. With Tieflings everywhere in 5E, I am tired of modern D&D proving the Satanic Panic right, and they have become as exhausted as the Drizzt trope. Sorry to burst your ideal character bubble, but everyone is playing them, and they are tired now.

Plus, if you remove them from the "normal world" when demons do show up, it feels special again, and not everyone is playing one. Let evil be evil, and stop co-opting it.

I like For Gold & Glory, the beautiful, free second-edition retro-clone. The book is far better organized than the Wizards reprints, and the core-book art is superior. I will give the 2E Monster Compendium scores on better art for plates of each monster, even if they are slightly cartoony. FG&G does the job, feels like classic AD&D, and the PDF is free for everyone.

Why am I buying BX OSR games when I have this? Designer hubris? To say I "have something" and try to use that as an influencer? Why is it that on YouTube, most OSR influencers are trying to sell you something while ignoring the free games? Why is it Labyrinth Lord versus Dragonslayer all of a sudden? Are we all dumping OSE, which is also an expensive version of the game, for some reason?

The ads were bad enough on there; now all the videos are ads.

OSRIC is free. FG&G is free. Even Basic Fantasy is free.

Are we in this for the game and community, or are we here to sell people things?

Another great thing is FG&G's compatibility with the 2E complete guides, which give us "subclass options," or what we call character kits, to flavor our character classes without creating new ones or piling on complexity. A gladiator or barbarian is a fighter with a character kit; it is simple and easy, reducing rules bloat. These books you need to buy from Wizards, but they are worthy and an improvement over the first edition.

I love character kits over 5E's mess of subclasses. This is a much cleaner design, and it works perfectly. I never want to see hundreds of character classes and subclass options for each one in a game ever again; it is a terrible mess of a game design that reminds me of tangled, knotted, dusty, and filthy cords behind an entertainment center. 5E's design sucks, and it is far too complicated for its own good.

A gladiator, cavalier, or barbarian is a fighter with a character kit. No new classes are needed. The design achieves flavor with minimal rules interaction, and is a modern, object-oriented design that is clean and simple. There is a beauty to 2E's design that has never been replicated, and certainly not by the BX-obsessed OSR. Many OSR games will create a gladiator and barbarian class, just to fill books and sell you more stuff.

Yes, I am calling this out, but the OSR suffers from many of the problems that ail the 5E design community. Where simplicity, inheritance, and elegance can solve a problem, many OSR games do the same exact thing that 5E does: create classes to please the collectors, sell books, and bloat the game until it becomes unplayable.

Character kits rock.

THAC0 is the better system.

The second edition wins on solid design principles.

The AD&D 2E monster book is also a purchase if you want the product identity monsters; for FG&G comes with plenty of monsters of its own and is compatible with all of OSRIC's monsters, too. For that matter, all of BX is compatible too, just make sure descending AC is supported, as it should be. If you look around, you will find literally tons of OSRIC and Swords & Wizardry monsters that are directly compatible with second edition, and there is no shortage of foes to fight.

We have bards here, too, so that is not a reason to skip out. In fact, bards are a more challenging class to play, and I like that design since it forces you to have a high degree of player skill and leverage your roleplaying chops, which you should be doing as a bard instead of falling back on designer gimmes and free magic powers. I would not let an inexperienced player choose a bard in 2E; this is for skilled players only. As it should be.

Add the second edition's story XP and increased monster XP on top of what is already the best version of the game, and you have pure gaming bliss.

The Birth of Subclasses

During the life of AD&D 2E, they released these books in the "Complete" line, which introduced "kits" for the various classes, allowing you to flavor your class along a particular theme, such as a pirate, swashbuckler, barbarian, or gladiator. This was the birth of the subclass, and also a lot of the "spin-off" classes, such as the barbarian in later editions.

The kits were a small collection of proficiencies, suggested gear, and minor bonuses for a particular character type, and they were cool and fun. They were not that complex or in-depth, and they did not have leveled bonuses or ability progression. All they were was a set of modifiers, kit abilities, limitations, and other modifications.

Subclasses that become treed progression paths and that load new abilities on you every few levels are far too much overkill for a fantasy game. In the end, a barbarian should be a "fighter kit" and not its own class, and the barbarian with subclasses feels like going into far too much depth for a game that is supposed to be simple and straightforward.

Subclasses these days feel too overdone, and classes that should be subclasses (barbarian) end up being their own class. There is something to be said for "keeping all fighters under fighter," using simple kits to flavor the fighter, and keeping the core class identity strong. We end up with a bloated game that is not easy anymore, and classes that go too in-depth with subclass progression, and the complexity shoots out of the roof.

I could say even Old School Essentials suffers from the "too many specific classes" problem, too, along with many OSR games that just keep adding and adding without putting a foot down to keep the game's design clean, streamlined, simple, and uncluttered.

Kits are "class flavors," and they work well that way, and help us differentiate one fight from another. Yes, there can be more generic fighters, but gladiators are a special flavor of fighter; they are still fighters at heart and should not stray too far from the core fighter concepts and core abilities.

And they are optional. Can you be a "gladiator" without them, just using the core book? Yes, pick a fighter and say you are. Do these add flavor? Yes.

These books work perfectly with For Gold & Glory, the 2E retro-clone that stands out as a perfect, community-supported, throwback 2E set of rules with one of the most generous redistribution policies I have seen in the OSR. One of the things I love about AD&D 2E is that TSR positioned the game as a competitor to GURPS 3E in the late 1990s, and they made an honest attempt to be "everything generic fantasy" by splitting out the D&D, setting-specific, and generic fantasy parts in distinct lines of books. This wasn't TSR "dividing the market" more than it was "making sure the core line of books could be used with any specific setting." The "Complete" line of books could be used with the Forgotten Realms just as well as they could with Dark Sun.

Contrast that with today, we get new 5.5E Forgotten Realms books with subclass options that everyone will backport into every setting anyway, and all of a sudden, everything is a mixed-up mess in a stewpot. Today's organization of books and setting guides is one long run-on mess of content.

I love the organization of the product lines in AD&D 2E. It makes sense to me: I can focus on a specific setting, have the rules-sourcebooks that support it, and a core of the 2E rules forming the foundation. The idea that TSR published too many campaign settings is a simplification; they should have just focused on the Realms and Dark Sun, possibly combining Birthright and Greyhawk, and the Realms and Spelljammer.

Then again, Dark Sun never really had a great direction in 2E, and the setting feels like the lore ran dry, and nothing interesting was happening after the dragon kings were deposed.

Ravenloft should have been expanded to a whole world to take on Vampire: The Masquerade, along with a LARP option. This is where they lost a lot of ground in fantasy role-playing in the 1990s. Vampire and Magic: The Gathering were the death of D&D.

The Complete books work perfectly with FG&G, and if you want a source of "subclass-lite" kits for your game, check these out. I like this design theory; they aren't writing hundreds of pages of new classes, and the kits aren't all that complicated. They serve as "flavoring" for a class that can seem a bit dry and dull, turning it into something unique, special, and fitting its purpose in the world.

And you are not supposed to use everything in every Complete book. If you have a gladiator-themed game, just use that with the core rules, and don't try to use everything in every book. Again, the design theory feels like GURPS: you don't use it all at once; just stick with the core rules and drop in the bits you need. Again, this is unlike 5E these days, where our character creation tools bloat and die with too many options. I have had new players get scared off by those bloated tools in my 5E game, and I dislike them.

If you play a lot of 2E and are looking for optional expansions for FG&G, check this line out. These are worthy.

Second Edition was Player Empowerment

The moment we realized that the XP for GP system was thrown out for AD&D 2nd Edition, it changed the entire game for us. We became fans again. The "natural assumption" that experience means reward and story progression, rather than "cheating by finding a 50,000gp emerald" and rocketing up the level chart, made us reevaluate the game's core assumptions, and the system became fun again for us. Here is an example of why.

Let's use Old School Essentials Classic Fantasy for this one, and assume we are the referee laying out a sandbox world. Now, this is how I would never lay out a sandbox world, so this is just for our example. Let's say our party consisted of your typical fighter, mage, thief, and cleric foursome. We decide what the maximum level of the players will be in this sandbox, say, level seven, and then go to the XP charts. 

We see that 80,000 gold pieces per character are needed to get everyone to level 7, which is level 8 for the thief, but it is close enough. Multiply that by four, and then we have 320,000 gold pieces of loot we need to spread through the world to get them there, and we can assume they will miss a lot of loot so we can be a little on the generous side, or "place unfound loot" in their path if they miss out on the 10,000 gp they walked by in the last dungeon.

We get minimal XP for monsters, so it is better to steal the loot rather than kick down the door and fight. This encourages creative thinking, which is a benefit. Wandering monsters give us minimal XP, too, so the fewer we meet, the better off we are. Wilderness encounters are the same, just a waste of time.

We are living in a BX, BECMI, 0E, and 1E world here. Gold and loot are experience. Rob, cheat, lie, and steal your way to fame and glory. Avoid fights. If it isn't bolted down, take it and sell it; every gold piece helps. Rusty weapons? Take those too, if we have the weight allowance. Also, for the most part, ACKS follows this model too, though it has the advantage of needing all that money in the domain game.

And, as a referee, I would stop handing out treasure; progression would all but stop. I can stop a campaign's progression dead in its tracks with a GP equals XP game. I just get stingy with the loot.

The key takeaways here are that the referee has strict control over progression through loot distribution and that fights are best avoided. Wandering monsters and random encounters are terrible things.

Back to the Second Edition, and I refuse to play the POD reprints as I fully support the community games. I recently watched a YouTube video by a noted OSR creator who said there is "no need" for retro-clones these days, now that you can buy the originals from Wizards. He is 100% and utterly wrong for saying that, as retro-clones are needed to protect against "future shenanigans" by Wizards, and also, there is NO WAY you can legally publish an adventure and say "this is for AD&D" or anything other than the current, supported version of 5E these days.

The community relies on retro-clones to publish new material for these rule systems. Do I want to publish and sell an AD&D 1E adventure? Use OSRIC. BX? Use OSE. Second Edition? Use FG&G.

You can't go on the Dungeon Master's Guild and write AD&D and BX adventures. They must be for 5E only. Until Wizards releases the previous editions of the rules to Creative Commons, supporting retro-clones and holding them up as "the definitive edition we should be playing" is the best way to go. Also, the POD reprints have errors that have not been fixed.

I take it a step further and play the retro-clones, and choose to talk about and only support them. This is how we immunize the community from a future OGL Crisis, and this is the only sane position to take in these "corporate times" of greed. To just say "buy them from Wizards" does a massive disservice to the entire community of creators, third-party adventure and expansion creators, and the entire market as a whole.

I can publish an adventure for OSRIC and sell it.

I can't publish an AD&D adventure at all; there is no way.

I am not sorry for calling this out, nor pushing the clones over the originals. We got into the OGL Crisis because of this laziness, and it will happen again the day DM's Guild goes away. This is gaming: every service and site gets cancelled someday, and all your digital content is lost, so you will need to repurchase it somewhere else.

When that day happens, all the people playing the POD reprints will flood YouTube to complain and be milked for outrage clicks, and I will be over here happily still playing and creating for my retro clones. I will get so much time back in my day, never need to watch the hundreds of hours of anger, and be happy with what I have.

All because of making the right choice today.

While I may use AD&D 2E PDFs in my games, For Gold & Glory is my Second Edition core ruleset. OSRIC is my 1E, forever, even with the sacred words of Gygax in print. I do not care, and I am making the right choices. If enough people do this, it creates the change we want to see.

Do you want to create change?

Or do you want the world to continue down the path it is on?

Be the change you want to see.

Back to the subject. The XP we get for a hill giant in BX and OSE is about 650 XP for defeating them, divided among party members, so about 150 XP. When your next level is over 20,000 XP away, that is a drop in the bucket, and given this is BX, and we could be 15,000 XP away from the next level, this would mean defeating 100 of them (with no treasure), just to reach the next level. Monster XP is near-worthless in BX games. There is no way a party could even fight 100 hill giants, even one at a time, without taking losses, not to mention that it would take forever.

Hence, treasure is the XP equalizer.

How about First Edition? In OSRIC, we are better off with the hill giant at 1,800 XP. Now we are getting somewhere. With 450 XP per party member, we are still talking about needing 33 of them (minus treasure) to clear that 15,000 XP. That is still a steep hill to climb without finding treasure, so even in OSRIC, it is better to avoid fights and just grab the loot.

Second Edition and For Gold & Glory are the moments when everything changes, and they did for us. Even though they stripped out half-orcs, demons, and assassins from the game, this was still the best edition of AD&D we ever played, and it got us in the game for a full 10 years. We skipped 2.5E and just used the core rules, which are beautifully preserved by FG&G. We could still back-port in the missing elements from 1E, and when Planescape 2E came about, the demons were back under new names and management.

What about the Second Edition?

No XP for treasure. None. It is an option in the DMG, but discouraged, and it is not mentioned in FG&G. You do get "Story XP," which should be equal to the XP gained for overcoming encounters while accomplishing that goal, and the degree of challenge. The language is essential here! Overcoming encounters also means surrender, fooling them, helping them, turning them into allies, or any other way an "encounter" can be "overcome."

So the hill giant in FG&G is worth 6,000 XP, nearly ten times the BX experience amount. Double that if you defeated the hill giant in a quest where the beast was attacking a village, and you were helping people or doing something heroic. If you convinced the hill giant the town wasn't so bad, and got the townspeople to back off, and they all lived happily ever after? Guess what? You still got the full 12,000 XP, split among you.

The encounter was overcome. The story goal was completed with a positive outcome.

And you didn't need to grab a single gold piece to earn those XP. You never needed to worry about treasure, and its importance was secondary. Mind you, it was still nice to have, but having the game's focus shift from acquiring gold and wealth to heroism, accomplishing quests, and story goals was huge for us. This, even though the rules were 99% the same as First Edition, was enough to make us fans of the game again.

And let's factor in random encounters now. Overcoming random encounters on the path of completing a story goal means the XP value of those encounters, already very high, is added to the story XP for the quest. So that pack of hyenas you fought on your way to the hill giant cave as a random wilderness encounter? It counts toward completing the story, and the already high XP is doubled when the story is finished. Are the cave beetles encountered as wandering monsters in the cave? They all count.

Zero gold pieces were gained here.

Note, in FG&G, magic items do give XP. This is the only exception to the XP for treasure rule, but the XP values are about on par with defeating a monster, so it is a minor adjustment, and certainly nothing you can depend upon for leveling. Still, that XP does count towards "story XP" when they are calculated.

As a referee, I do not need to place 320,000 gold pieces around my sandbox to account for leveling anymore, nor do I even control progression all that much. Most of that is in the player's hands, with the monsters they defeat and the stories they undertake, which could also be their own stories and goals.

This is another essential thing. Story XP is not just "referee quests" but can be a part of a character's personal storyline, goals, and motivations. If a character starts a self-initiated "revenge arc," it could create Story XP for the various milestones and story points along the way. Never in the First Edition did they do this, yet it is possible in the Second Edition.

If players just wanted to "wander the map" and "kill everything," well, then that playstyle opens up, too. It is a bit pointless, but it is an option. Story XP will double progression speed, but they are free to wander the map like Grand Theft Auto and cause chaos if they want.

FG&G and the Second Edition rules do have the problem of "not needing money" at the higher levels. There are no prices on magic items here, nor were there in Second Edition AD&D, which openly dismissed the idea of "magic item shops" in the DMG. Is gold not being important really a problem in Second Edition? The entire concept of wealth as advancement was removed from the game, and characters had minimal need for wealth beyond hirelings and gear.

You have to remember: Second Edition was positioned as "the game for the novels," and the novels weren't about gathering all the gold to get progression either. In the novels, the characters performed heroic deeds, learned, and grew stronger, but never really reflected the original game's "gold for XP" concept. So Second Edition simulated the NYT Bestseller novels of the 1990s pretty well, and that is what the game was built for.

If there is no dominion game, and you don't need to buy magic items worth hundreds of thousands of gold, what do you need gold for? Gold is only required to buy a few things: travel, hirelings, mounts, and pay for lodging and supplies. You could run a "low wealth" game in Second Edition and never affect progression, player power, magic item availability, or any other part of the rules.

That is a feature, not a drawback, since chests full of gold tend to weigh down a party and limit their ability to travel and adventure. In a more story-focused game like Second Edition, if we need to get to "Danger Falls" to save the princess, we hop on our horses and head out. Who cares about securing 30,000 gold pieces of treasure in a bank or stronghold? Let's just focus on the story and go!

For groups wanting a more story-based game that focuses on heroics and not wealth, the Second Edition was built for that exact purpose. This may be the game you were looking for but never knew you wanted.

There is no way for me to stop progression in a Second Edition game as a referee, nor should there be. The game goes from referee-controlled to player-driven, with a much stronger focus on story arcs, quests, plots, and goals. The world and the NPCs become much more critical, along with factions and their motivations. If Orc barbarians are burning the northern villages and sacking towns, there is some instant motivation for players, and no treasure needs to be dangled in front of their faces for the players to want to jump in.

All the players need are goals and stories to go out and be heroes.

These will be driven by the NPCs, factions, and centers of civilization in the world. This is how the referee controls interest and drives player agency.

The rewards will be in the stories the characters tell. Not in the loot locked up in dungeon rooms.

And your characters are free to go wherever adventure calls them to.

Second Edition or ACKS?

A strong, themed world, with classic classes? Races designed to fit the worldbuilding? The challenge of low-level play? Simple rules that don't fight you? Classes designed to enhance roleplay and not overdo it on personal power gain.

I have a game like that. It does the First and Second Editions better than the originals, but it is strongly themed around sword-and-sandals gameplay. The Second Edition has nostalgia and feels for me. The First Edition is a solid base. Everything is compatible and works, and I am not chasing games or trying to buy myself out of a broken game and spending money to make it enjoyable again.

ACKS is the game I see for Gold & Glory, but it offers much more, including mid- and endgame. Like FG&G, it is a solid package, through and through.

Everything I have in the Second Edition with For Gold and Glory, ACKS delivers more of, in a high-quality package, without a day-old and damaged Forgotten Realms world. There is everything I would want and need here, including the classic gameplay. ACKS does a better job at delivering "the full experience" than anything in the first or second edition, since it supports a complete mid- and endgame.

Yes, starting off in OSRIC or FG&G will be about the same as ACKS. You are a nobody, walking around a vast world, and fighting to get a few coins to upgrade gear and find a nice, safe place to sleep at night. You get those first levels, train, and improve your abilities. The level one to three run is about the same in any of these games.

With ACKS, at the third or fourth level, things begin to change. You start unlocking class powers, which are like D&D 5E's subclass powers, but inspired by the old school abilities unique to each class. You unlock proficiencies, your character begins to change, and you prepare for a mid-game where you will start seeing the world in a new way.

You will begin to consider your legacy and future.

Will you conquer land and start a domain? Will you build a wizard's tower and dungeon for magical research? Will you start a trading company and begin to establish trading routes? Will you start a thief's guild? Will you unite the barbarian tribes of the north? Will you retake ancient elven lands and spread the elven kin's power and dominion? Will you dig deeper and forge a dwarven kingdom in the grand mountains? Will you build temples and spread your god's influence and religion? Will you establish a monastery and a new order of fighting monks devoted to wisdom and physical perfection? Will you make a sanctuary and train paladins to smite chaos and bring justice to the land?

You can do all that in ACKS. The endgame exists.

In the First and Second Editions? You find higher-level dungeons. In the Second Edition, your stories become "more epic" and are worth "more XP" since you are fighting "tougher monsters." In essence, 1E and 2E never change, and you are just doing "the same things, just higher level." The comparison to a video game is apt, since you are just "fighting to get more power" by the end. D&D is a very consumerist game, actively discouraging you from thinking about legacies, changing the world, or endgames. Like an MMO, they need to keep you "in the power grind" and "chasing the next thing" without "touching our unchangeable sandbox world."

While the starting points are the same, in ACKS, your view of the world and your legacy change. There will be a moment in every game where a character needs to answer the question, "Why am I here?"

If they survive, they can begin to answer that question through their actions.

Yes, I know what I said about piling on abilities as you level, and I still like Second Edition for its simplicity. ACKS borrows some from modern designs, and each class unlocks powers as you level. It does not overdo it, and there are only a handful, so the game gets a pass over modern designs that pile on a dozen or more powers in the mid-levels.

OSRIC, For Gold & Glory, Adventures Dark & Deep, and ACKS feel rock-solid to me. Any one of them is a great time. OSRIC is rock-solid First Edition fun. I like FG&G for its presentation, second-edition improvements, and streamlining. I like ACKS because it is a complete game, full of worldbuilding and flavor, with the endgame built into the experience, and everything serves that goal. Where FG&G falls short, such as in the endgame, ACKS delivers and is built to handle those types of games.

First and Second Edition is Where it is At

Many people are returning to the First and Second Editions. This all mixes with the BX, White Box, 0E, and other old-school gaming crowds, so the movement is vast and mostly cross-compatible. I get the feeling Shadowdark kicked this off, with the 5E players discovering the amazing old-school play style, becoming addicted to it, then wanting something more profound, going to higher levels of play, and adding more crunch and depth.

The only place you go after Shadowdark is BX or the First Edition. White Box and Zero Edition are also strong choices, but if you want to find the heart and soul of the hobby, you will pick up a copy of OSRIC or For Gold & Glory and stick to the classic TSR version of the game as we knew it in the 1980s and '90s.

I support the community edition games, not the reprints, since I support those who use these systems to write expansions, adventures, and create new content for these classic games. This is not possible with either AD&D 1E or 2E. So, either OSRIC or For Gold & Glory are my jams —what I talk about and what I play, even though I can get (flawed) POD reprints of the originals.

First Edition is what the Stranger Things kids would have been playing, not 5E. If the whole series followed 5E rules, then none of them would die, and they would be multiclassing to hell to break reality. Most of them would be warlock/paladin characters with a level of fighter to get action surge. Money would be meaningless, and they would be stopping the show every 10 minutes to rest.

Yes, there are level limits for non-human characters in First and Second Edition, but remember, non-humans are the only ones who can multiclass, splitting their XP between two classes and advancing in each. Yes, you have level limits for non-human characters, but you get to break the rules in fantastic ways. By the time Wizards released 3E, this went away; we lost much of the appeal of non-human characters, and it began the slow progression towards the current "races are meaningless marshmallow shapes" trend we see today and the blandification of D&D.

How non-human races and multiclassing worked is an original Gygaxian design feature, not a mistake. This has its roots in the original "race as class" system in the original B/X rules, and it was significantly expanded in First and Second Editions. Instead of Elves being only fighter/mages, they can be a cleric, fighter, mage, thief, or ranger; and Elves can also multi-class as fighter/mage, fighter/thief, fighter/mage/thief, or mage/thief. So, in BX, they only have one option, whereas in 1E/2E, they have 9 options, 4 of which are compelling multi-class choices.

Non-human racial multiclassing is the expanded BX race-as-class system and is meant to be balanced by racial level limits; otherwise, a multiclass Elf would reach an insane power level. There is something to be said for raising the non-human level limits on single-class choices, but the system defaults to multiclassing for PCs, while more single-class options are available for non-human NPCs.

As for choosing between the First and Second Editions? Start with OSRIC and the First Edition. If you want bards and to lose Half Orcs, assassins, and gold-based XP, go for Second Edition with For Gold & Glory. We stopped playing First Edition, and picked up the Second Edition, and liked it much better because of the "Story XP" as the game's default. The game had moved away from the rampant greed of the original and shifted more toward adventure and storytelling, closer to the novels and tales of heroism.

The tonal shift between First and Second Edition got us back into the game. Yes, this is nearly the same set of rules, but the change in tone was significant and a statement of what the game expected from you as heroes (or villains). Monster XP was dramatically raised, and it told us to "get out there and fight!" All of a sudden, we were no longer avoiding fights or stealing bags of gems; my party was getting into dangerous, thrilling, stand-up fights with dragons and other monsters.

Since "story XP" often equaled (but could not go above) the XP gained from fights, if you were fighting monsters as a part of a goal, story arc, or plot, you essentially doubled your XP by taking missions. Gold was still valuable for trading for magic items, spell research, and other costs, but it was not the driving force behind the game anymore. You could be a lone wanderer, finding magic items, and going around helping towns like Robin Hood, and not have much wealth, and still gain levels like you were wandering around an RPG or MMO.

The effect of this change was dramatic, pulling us back into AD&D.

The game was about storytelling and heroism again.

We ran a Second Edition Forgotten Realms campaign for years, and that was a fun game. The Forgotten Realms died for us with D&D 3E, and Greyhawk and its super-characters had returned. By the time D&D 4E came around, the Forgotten Realms was a zombie corpse ambling around and trying to find its head. We never played a 5E Forgotten Realms campaign, and Baldur's Gate 3 is not the world I knew, nor one I really want to experience, having played the original.

Starting with 3E, the game's focus shifted dramatically from the adventure-oriented storytelling of 2E to hardcore personal power. It has gotten worse and worse over the years, to the point where the sole driving motivation behind D&D these days is individual power, character builds, damage per turn, and character builds designed to cheat the rules.

If you played in the 1E and 2E eras, you know that the game was completely different. And let's not talk about the 2.5E era right before the end of TSR, when they were throwing everything and anything at the game to try to revive the system before the company's bankruptcy, and the insane amount of rules bloat introduced in the Options books.

If you started with 3E, you probably have no clue about the subtle shift between 1E and 2E regarding motivation and the game's tonal focus. You were on board the "character power train" from the start and probably think 5E is the best version ever. Because 5E gives you "the most power."

The game was never about that.

For us, 2E gave us "the most story," and that is what we wanted.

Bards: Classic vs. Modern

The bard character class has gotten worse over the years. We were first introduced to the bard as a "half caster" class in AD&D 2nd Edition, and today we know it as the excellent game, For Gold & Glory. If I am playing a bard, I will go back to the source implementation and stick with a solid Second Edition retro-clone.

The Second Edition's bard character class is not an easy class to play! The ability score requirements are high, and you can only be a human or a half-elf. The idea of dwarven bards, half-orc bards, and all sorts of other bards was never a "thing" back in Second Edition.

If you want the "modern" bard, the mix-and-match races and classes, play 3.5E and never go any further. This is still a good version of the class, but beware of the infamous "Wizards' bloat," where the 3.5E bard takes 4 pages of text-heavy rules just to describe the class, whereas FG&G does it all in just one page. The Second Edition has a BX-like simplicity to the game, even though it is a repackaged First Edition and shares all the complexity and depth.

I love you, 3.5E— you are the best version of Wizards' D&D ever made —but you are horribly, terribly overwritten and a mess of unorganized ideas and concepts. The game is barely playable without cheat sheets and lengthy FAQs. You are unplayable without a copy of the 3.5E SORD, explaining things the designers failed to lay out clearly in the rules.

Um, where is our 3.5E retro-clone?

Typically, the OSR would jump in on a project like this and knock out a few million on Kickstarter, but we have never gotten a great 3.5E retro-clone yet. Pathfinder 1e needs to be sunsetted, and the time is right to rebuild a classic game, strip out the accursed OGL, and make it open for everyone to play and create for. If you do end up writing a 3.5E retro-clone, please do not clone the word count.

In the Second Edition, bards are arcane casters. In the Third, you begin to see them as mixed arcane and divine casters, where they have healing spells. This is where the entire class starts to go off the rails. No longer do you need to play smart, figure out how to make a limited power set work for you, and lean heavily on your bard abilities. In the Third Edition, magic (and the written rules) starts to replace player skill. And you begin to think a bard can replace a cleric, which is just wrong.

A well-played Second Edition bard takes a lot of player skill to make it work; it is not an easy class. Your "party strength" will decrease, since you do not have a pure thief or mage in the party anymore. The bard will constantly need to prove themselves through creative play, a design choice I like. By the Fifth Edition, forget it, the player pandering has taken over, and the bard class is equal to or stronger than most pure caster classes, with better and more flexible powers. There is no such thing as a well-played Fifth Edition bard since the class is so easy.

Back here in Second Edition, if I had to pick one: bard, thief, or mage? That is a tough choice to make, and the bard always comes out second or third, depending on the amount of social roleplay we expect. Is this a dungeoning game? I would go for the thief. Is this a long-term campaign? Then, the mage. Only in social games does the bard begin to creep up in desirability, and then we factor in the far more desirable ranger for exploration campaigns.

And forget letting a low-skilled player pick a bard. This isn't some sort of gatekeeping; it is just that the class isn't for novice players or players unwilling to make it work. You need to be an excellent player to turn a class that has a very narrow and specific power set into an asset, and there will be moments where you will change the direction of the campaign.

Player skill matters!

But, a Second Edition bard in combat? Chainmail, no shields, and a bow, and you are not a front-line fighter. You can't shoot your bow and sing, so to grant the inspire courage bonus, you need to be performing for three rounds, and the bonus begins on the fourth. The fight could be over, and you haven't even gotten to the chorus yet. You don't get spells until the second level. But join the club, in Second Edition, everyone sort of sucks; you just suck a little less in a few social areas.

But again, this is what makes Second Edition fun. You are not over-reliant on "the designers giving you powers and abilities." You need to use your brain for once, and not your character sheet. You are a second-level bard. You know one first-level spell per day. You have a few thief skills and no backstab. You have a few specific class abilities. How do you make yourself useful?

Go to the armory and start buying weapons. Get a bow and help out as a ranged attacker. Lean heavily on your lore, counter song, and hear noise abilities. Be the person who can help identify magic items. Know your ultra-specific class abilities and use them every chance you can get. But for the most part, you will be a second-line melee fighter and primary ranged attacker.

Put your delusions of grandeur away and learn how to contribute to party damage without special, flashy, overdone player-pandering powers. In many regards, you are like a ranger or paladin, someone with a few special tricks that needs to be able to fight in melee or put out consistent ranged damage.

Everyone needs to worry about gear, encumbrance, and hand-to-hand combat. You need to be smart to make a limited set of powers work. The designers are not shoving powers at you to make the game easy and constantly distract you. If I play a bard in 5E? I can mostly ignore the equipment list. If I play a bard in 2E? Chainmail weighs 40 pounds, and I am already pushing toward becoming lightly encumbered. I may go for leather or studded leather and carry gear and treasure.

I need to make wise choices here, not just "armor up to the max" like you do in modern D&D.

In the First and Second Editions, your gear and speed of movement are a part of your "character build," and each piece of gear you can carry is like a specialized power. Do you have a rope and a grappling hook? No climbing skill rolls are needed, and even the other characters in the party can climb a rope. That rope is a "get out of jail free" card you can pull in specific situations that mostly lets you bypass needing to make skill or ability rolls.

Modern D&D (3.5E and beyond) tends to "screw the players" and assumes you need to constantly make skill and ability rolls to attempt actions with equipment. In classic D&D (1E and 2E), equipment works like a "modern game character power" and mainly does not require a skill roll. You pay the price in hauling that rope around and suffer encumbrance penalties, guess what? That rope will work wonders when you need it to. That rope is now part of your "character build," and you are free to use it in whatever creative way you want to, and I, as the referee, will be very generous when it comes to you using it.

This is a huge, huge difference between classic D&D and modern D&D.

In modern D&D, they need to use skill systems to weaken equipment, and they ignore encumbrance rules to do so. What "gives you power" is what "the designers grant you," like they were benevolent, all-controlling gods. Equipment is often used to gatekeep skill rolls, preventing you from even attempting the action without it.

In classic D&D, equipment grants special character powers and replaces the modern design theory of "designers giving you toys" like you were children needing to be entertained. You pay the price in hauling backpacks filled with junk, tracking the weight, and balancing your load and treasure-hauling capacity, and you get instant, no-roll-needed benefits. Don't have equipment? Okay, give me an ability score roll and pay the price for not having the right tools for the job.

There is such a stark, fundamental difference here; I do not know why more people do not see it.

And if you want to play bards and modern character classes, go back to Second Edition and try For Gold & Glory. I would skip 1E clones that try to remake bards, and just experience the classic design again. You may find you like the gritty, innovative, creative play style here better than you do, with game designers consistently tossing toys and powers at you to try to please you.

Second Edition rocks, and it improves on every concept and design later ruined by overgenerous game designers in 3E and beyond, while still giving you the OG modern classes and roles. This is where modern gaming originated, and it is the purest form of what we know as D&D today.